Chatbots are replacing Google’s traditional search, devastating traffic for some publishers

June 10, 2025

The AI armageddon is here for online news publishers.

Chatbots are replacing Google searches, eliminating the need to click on blue links and tanking referrals to news sites. As a result, traffic that publishers relied on for years is plummeting.

Traffic from organic search to HuffPost’s desktop and mobile websites fell by just over half in the past three years, and by nearly that much at the Washington Post, according to digital market data firm Similarweb.

Business Insider cut about 21% of its staff last month, a move CEO Barbara Peng said was aimed at helping the publication “endure extreme traffic drops outside of our control.” Organic search traffic to its websites declined by 55% between April 2022 and April 2025, according to data from Similarweb.

At a companywide meeting earlier this year, Nicholas Thompson, chief executive of the Atlantic, said the publication should assume traffic from Google would drop toward zero and the company needed to evolve its business model.

Google’s introduction last year of AI Overviews, which summarize search results at the top of the page, dented traffic to features like vacation guides and health tips, as well as to product review sites. Its U.S. rollout last month of AI Mode, an effort to compete directly with the likes of ChatGPT, is expected to deliver a stronger blow. AI Mode responds to user queries in a chatbot-style conversation, with far fewer links.

“Google is shifting from being a search engine to an answer engine,” Thompson said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “We have to develop new strategies.”

The rapid development of click-free answers in search “is a serious threat to journalism that should not be underestimated,” said William Lewis, the Washington Post’s publisher and chief executive. Lewis is former CEO of the Journal’s publisher, Dow Jones.

The Washington Post is “moving with urgency” to connect with previously overlooked audiences and pursue new revenue sources and prepare for a “post-search era,” he said.

At the New York Times, the share of traffic coming from organic search to the paper’s desktop and mobile websites slid to 36.5% in April 2025 from almost 44% three years earlier, according to Similarweb.

The Wall Street Journal’s traffic from organic search was up in April compared with three years prior, Similarweb data show, though as a share of overall traffic it declined to 24% from 29%.

Sherry Weiss, chief marketing officer of Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, said that as the search landscape changes, the company is focusing on building trust with readers and earning habitual traffic.

“As the referral ecosystem continues to evolve, we’re focused on ensuring customers come to us directly out of necessity,” she said.

Google executives have said the company remains committed to sending traffic to the web, and that people who click on links after seeing AI Overviews tend to spend more time on those sites. The search giant also said it elevates links to news sites and doesn’t necessarily show AI Overviews when users search for trending news. Queries for content included in older articles and lifestyle stories, however, may produce an overview.

Publishers have been squeezed by emerging technology since the dawn of the internet.

Digital news decimated once-lucrative print publications funded by classifieds, advertising and subscription revenue.

Social-media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter helped funnel online traffic to publishers, but ultimately pivoted away from giving priority to news. Search was a stalwart traffic driver for more than a decade, despite some turbulence as Google tweaked its powerful algorithm.

Generative AI is now rewiring how the internet is used altogether.

“AI was not the thing that was changing everything, but it will be going forward. It’s the last straw,” said Neil Vogel, the chief executive of Dotdash Meredith, which is home to brands including People and Southern Living.

When Dotdash merged with Meredith in 2021, Google search accounted for around 60% of the company’s traffic, Vogel said. Today, it is about one-third. Overall traffic is growing, thanks to efforts including newsletters and the MyRecipes recipe locker.

Many online news outlets were already facing bleak trends such as declining public trust and fierce competition. With search traffic dwindling, they are putting an even greater emphasis on connecting directly with readers through businesses such as live conferences.

The Atlantic is working on building those reader relationships with an improved app, more issues of the print magazine and an increased investment in events, Thompson said in a recent interview. The company has said subscriptions and advertising revenue are on the rise.

Leaders at Politico and Business Insider—both owned by Axel Springer—also have been emphasizing audience engagement and connecting with readers.

While publishers contend with how AI is changing search, they are also seeking ways to protect their copyright material. The large language models that underpin the new generation of chatbots are trained on data hoovered up from the open web, including news articles.

Some media companies have embarked on legal battles against particular AI startups, while also signing licensing deals with other ones. The New York Times, for instance, sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, and recently announced an AI licensing agreement with Amazon. The Wall Street Journal’s parent company, News Corp, has a content deal with OpenAI and a lawsuit pending against Perplexity.

Meanwhile, the generative AI race is becoming a significant threat to Google’s core search business.

Though Google said it has seen an increase in total searches on Apple devices, an Apple executive said in federal court last month that Google searches in Safari, the iPhone maker’s browser, had recently fallen for the first time in two decades.

https://archive.is/97UYY

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5735595&forum_id=2#49001690)

It's occurred to me it won't be long before humans start aping AI behavior.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5735595&forum_id=2#49001784)